Sweet Maria's Weblog

Another great trip to Kenya, to see the amazing system from the small cooperative farmer, to the factory (what they call a coffee mill), to the dry mill and preparing coffee for export. The entire Kenya photo travelog is here. There is no other coffee origin with a system like this, including the Nairobi Coffee Auction that markets small lots based on cup quality, where the best coffees get the best price. Add to that the recent reforms that guarantee 80% of the sale price minus costs gets into the hands of the farmer, and you have a fantastic system to help buyers discover the best qualities. Again, Kenya is a place I just can't take my finger off the shutter, and nothing gets me going like photos of ripe coffee cherry. We came to see the harvest and take photographs, and that we did. It was just my 2nd trip to this place, and the first for my travel pal, little Jeremy Tooker of 4 barrel coffee. I think we sorted out some details, visited a ton of factories, saw a lot of harvest and a lot of cherry being sorted (one of many small details that makes for such high quality in Kenya coffees). Some nice images are buried in here, and a few just get by. There are some mediocre ones that are from my GPS device, and have accurate geotags. Thanks for looking! -Tom

I went on a brief trip to Uganda, for the very first time. I was traveling with one Jeremy Tooker of 4 barrel coffee, and we met Charles Angebault, who has a project with a cooperative near Mbale named, rather comically, CoffeeACup coop. Okay, I know you are dying to know ... it stands for Community Organized Farmers From Elgon Escarpment Arabica Coffee Uganda Program! Actually it was supposed to have on E after Coffee, but it was mistranscribed to they thought up "Escarpment" to justify the additional E. Uganda has potential, but their is much quality work to do in harvesting and drying of coffee. Most farmers never drink coffee here ... in fact many don't know exactly what coffee is used for. Because it is ground into powder, and because the government long ago would trade coffee for guns when they lacked money to pay for it, farmers actually believe coffee is ground and made into gunpowder! We met Mathias, the inspired and inspiring leader of the CoffeeACup cooperative, and Joselyn who is the development director, and I found them to be extremely intelligent, intuitive and motivated. I really hope this porject pans out, and we can elevate the quality as well as introduce small lot, farmer-specific Uganda coffee in this next harvest season. Aleco from Stumptown was the first visitor here, and he encouraged us to check out this project and to become involved, so a big thanks to him for what amounted to a few great days of coffee travel, camping out in tents, eating fresh omelets and local foods all day, and making some new friends ... as well as meeting 10,000 smiling Bugisu children, all who must be photographed and then you must show each their photo on the digital camera. It was great fun. I felt like I was in a parade for 4 days, waving and greeting everyone we passed. Ah! Some of the images can be seen on our flickr or the full Uganda photo set at Sweet Maria's Dot Com. -Tom

In this pairing we are using coffees from two farms that have been around a long long time, a Peaberry lot from the Matalapa Estate in El Salvador, and a Bourbon lot from the Puerta Verde estate, Antigua, Guatemala.I am not sure if the fact that the farms have been around so long contributes to their "classic cup" profile or not, but that is the case with both of these coffees.Both are truly classic Central American coffees.With the Matalapa Peaberry lot, the cup is vividly bright, with bracing orange acidity, laced with slight floral bits. As it cools there is bright and dynamic lemon with a cinnamon note.The Puerte Verde Bourbon is a classic Bourbon cup, dense mouthfeel, restrained flavors, classic brightness and balance.Both coffees were roasted to City+ with final thermoprobe temperature of 422 degrees and roast times of 15 minutes.